Faith
by nimmieamee
Summary: Minific. George/Angelina. The marriage of a believer and one who lost faith.


The Johnsons were fortunate, said Angelina's parents. They said this in spite of all logic and mounting evidence to the contrary; in spite of several tragedies; in spite of small cruelties which had been committed upon the wizarding-born, foreign side of the family throughout the years; in spite of terrible injustices which had plagued the Muggle-descended, local side for nearly a century in the British Isles. They said it reverently, with complete assurance. They said it and Angelina believed them. This is because they — and she — had a strange, stubborn, surviving quality in them. Faith.

Faith. Ugh. Odd and illogical and very Muggle, wrote many a Minister, over the years. Ought to be banished from the wizarding world, said a portrait of Dexter Fortescue, just last week. Thankfully not in vogue for several centuries, sighed the late Lucilla Malfoy, one hundred years ago. A panacea for small and miserable and unintelligent folk, said young Nicholas Flamel in 1350.

For, illogical as magic was, it welcomed logic. The wizarding world adored cool explanations and easy blood theories, worshipped methodical thought and cold deconstruction. It stood uneasy next to such inexplicable things as belief, love, unfairness, death, the divine. These were the great problems generations (and Dark Lords) had attempted to solve, and would try their hand at forevermore. So that when someone like Angelina appeared in sight, sure of herself, thanking the world for her good fortune, confident even when she was clearly a half-blood, clearly had hair quite beyond the normal, clearly was not top of her class, clearly spent too much time on the Quidditch pitch, clearly had little understanding of her tender gender and muddled blood and her occasional limits, clearly was not _favored_, by all the blood theories and social thinkers and rational minds of the time; the wizarding world would throw up its hands and declare her quite silly, very stupid, a conceited little mind. Grasping for pretty straws from a cold and hard and scientific universe.

Which was not to say that Angelina cared a whit. _She_ saw the world as divided between the fortunate and good and loving; and exacting, pitiless, heartless people, not guided by morality or kindness, merely consumed by egotism, an entire parade of fallen star names. This was the sum of all their pure blood and their mathemagical, scientific exactness, in Angelina's estimate.

Until! Until she should go away to school. Oh, school blasts open the mind and the heart, or at least proper schooling does; and it does this not so much through textbooks and theory, as through a sudden and terrible exposure to one's peers, their strange personalities, their unflinching quirks. It was at school that Angelina met a pair of genuine Experimenters.

Experimenting with color-changing charms, and with the patience of Professor McGonagall. Experimenting with getting rich quick, and with exploding potions. Experimenting with the boundaries of magic itself, and with the toilet seats in the boys' loo. Experimenting with the points system (how many could one lose in one day, really?) and with bits of canary fluff, and with beating out Zonko, and with the limits of transfiguration, and with ickle Ronniekins. Experimenting not because of, but often in _spite_ of pure old Mum and Ministry man Dad. Always experimenting.

And having _fun_ at it, too. Fred and George were fun, above all; warm and merry, not cold and (too) merciless. They were quite the opposite of Angelina — not believers in the slightest; that seemed like such a _mum_ thing to be, really; probably people like Percy became believers, because for all their intelligence people like Percy had stubborn cores and couldn't really get creative, couldn't really get dangerous and face hard truths, right Gred?

Right, Forge.

But, see, they were not at all what Angelina had been expecting, from a pair of scientific minds. They were not lost in blood obsession. They were not in need of the divine. They were _brilliant_. And funny. And good friends to her — they happened upon her and the older MacLaggen in Madam Puddifoots, once, and transformed a dismal date into a prank-filled delight. They showed her where the thestrals were, they looked the other way when she and Katie snuck out after hours, they stole Firewhiskey before the Yule Ball and shared with all. They took her to see a mirror in which all the sweetest and most perfect things were reflected, like a vision of God. (It's only a tricky bit of illusory charmswork, they said, half-bragging, half-modest, as if not sure whether they wanted to impress her with this or not. As if not sure which _one_ wanted to impress her, even.)

And so Angelina made peace with this atheistic experimentation. She knocked around her mind, not to mention her heart, until there was room in it for these two, these pitiless purebloods, for she suspected that someday with all their experimenting they might crack the code to curing some terrible illness, might bring the world struggling forward into a brighter day — this was the hand of God in science. And who better to accomplish it than such a pair, so united, so perfect, so fortunate — for the two were never, ever alone; and there was always one there to check the other; they were twin suns at the center of a galaxy of good cheer, and perhaps they thought very highly of themselves, perhaps they recognized no Higher Power or even the lowliest school authority, but still! Still, they were not egotists. How could they be? Each loved the other better than himself.

Having expanded her heart and mind so, she could not shrink them back down again. You must know that a week after Fred died, without fulfilling this grand miracle she had been so sure they would unleash on the world, Angelina stood before her faithful parents and church and community, and _doubted_. For the first time in her life, she could see no divine reason. Only pitiless, exacting truth. An unfair universe. No fortune for anyone, not really. And how horrible it was, how evil and silly and small, to crow about their good fortune, their survival.

When Fred lay dead.

Fred. Who had gazed with her at the mirror of heart's desire and joked that her expectations were too high, that he saw no divinely-made world, that he needed no divinely made world. That he saw only himself and his brother, as they were, together, working on building a life for themselves. A bit silly Angelina was, right Gred?

A bit demanding, I'd say, Forge.

And for a year after, Angelina was numb and cold, and curbed her demands. She went to the Wasps, and let them put her on reserve though she was a better player by far than old Derwent. She composed several Owls to the Weasleys, but never sent them. She felt for the first time that she was not a flesh and blood miracle, a strange bit of chance made living, a walking fortune; but instead a kind of failed experiment, a clockwork woman sitting alone on a bench, with her faith mechanism quite broken. Until one day a freckled hand should reach out from the stands and poke her.

"_Reserve_?" George said. "That's not you. You're better than that."

"Closed down your shop for months," snapped Angelina, who could not bear to be the only broken mechanism in the place. But then she felt bad.

"It's open now," George said. "Percy's helping. Running it. Probably into the ground."

"What do you do, then?" asked Angelina, genuinely curious. "If you're not running it, I mean."

George picked at his scarf (black; did not suit him), and said offhandedly. "This and that. I went to see you once."

"My mum didn't say so," said Angelina.

"It was at your church," George clarified. "You were wearing this thing over your hair. I thought it was silly, covering up all your hair like that. I like your hair."

"Bet you thought the whole thing was silly," Angelina said.

"No," George said, suddenly stubborn. "No. I — I thought of the mirror then. When that fellow, your dad or whoever, started talking? I thought of—"

"My dad made you think of your heart's desire," Angelina said flatly.

"Made me think it wasn't just my heart's desire," George said. "But something, somewhere, some fortune I might get. Someday."

She stared at him. For the first time in as long as she'd known him, he looked almost embarrassed, and not at all brilliant. Young and alone. He muttered, "Not that it makes any _sense_. I just. Maybe someday. After I'm dead. I'll see what I saw then."

* * *

The Weasleys were fortunate, said Fred and Roxanne's parents. They said this in spite of evidence to the contrary, in spite of what people said about the family, in spite of pointless deaths and mourning that would not go away. They said this in spite of the world's injustices, which they were fully aware of, and which Mum poured a Quidditch fortune and most of the shop money into correcting; and in spite of a stubborn part in Dad that could not let go and face hard truths no matter how many times Uncle Percy laid them out before him. They said this even when they felt broken. And when they said it, Fred and Roxanne believed it. Mum and Dad simply seemed very sure, glancing between each other in perfect understanding.

It was, against all odds, a very happy marriage, this marriage of knocked-about heart and expanded mind, of a Believer and an Experimenter.

The Weasleys were fortunate.

* * *

originally posted on my tumblr, livesandliesofwizards.


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